We Don’t Know Whether We’re at War with ISIS

The president and his top cabinet secretaries and military officials appear to be unsure of whether the United States is at war with ISIS. Or, perhaps, they simply can’t stick to a single story.

Consider the following:

“The notion that the United States should be putting boots on the ground, I think would be a profound mistake.”

- President Barack Obama,September 7“As I have said before, these American forces will not have a combat mission—we will not get dragged into another ground war in Iraq.”

President Barack Obama, September 10“What we are doing is engaging in a very significant counterterrorism operation. It’s going to go on for some period of time. If somebody wants to think about it as being a war with [ISIS], they can do so, but the fact is it's a major counterterrorism operation that will have many different moving parts.”

- Secretary of State John Kerry,September 11“This will not be an easy or a brief effort. . . . We are at war with [ISIS], as we are with al-Qaeda.”

- Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel,September 16“If we reach the point where I believe our advisors should accompany Iraqi troops on attacks against specific [ISIS] targets, I will recommend that to the president . . . ”

- General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, September 16

There are three unanswered questions here. The first: Is the United States at war with ISIS or not? This is of particular interest to those who believe the president might not have legal authority to conduct such a war. The Authorization for Use of Military Force that the administration claims justifies its campaign against ISIS pertains to al-Qaeda, of which ISIS is no longer a member. Some members of Congress feel the president needs congressional approval for a new war effort. (The administration has said it will seek Congress’s blessing for $500 million to train Syrian rebels.)

The second question: What will American troops actually do in Iraq? The president and his secretary of state have repeatedly insisted the mission will encompass four elements: targeted air strikes, support for the Iraqi security forces, training of rebels in Syria, and protection of American Embassy personnel. Hagel and Dempsey’s comments at Tuesday’s Senate Armed Services Committee panel hearing instead left the window open to a more active combat role for U.S. ground troops.

Dempsey said he doesn’t believe U.S. troops need to engage in direct, ground combat at this time. But he revealed that the president has asked him to “come back to him on a case-by-case basis,” which marks a departure from the Obama statements at the top of this article. (The White House quickly moved to characterize Dempsey’s comments as “hypothetical,” and again insisted there would be no “ground troops in a combat role.”)

And the last unsolved question is: What type of threat does ISIS pose to the United States? Many top intelligence officials insist the terrorist group does not represent a domestic threat, and Hagel himself had to backtrack. On Tuesday, he limited his assessment, arguing that ISIS poses “an immediate threat to American citizens in Iraq,” many of whom, as *The Guardian’*s Spencer Ackerman notes, were sent to Iraq to deal with ISIS. Contrast that with Hagel’s comments on August 21: “They are an imminent threat to every interest we have, whether it’s in Iraq or anywhere else.”

If the administration is trying to project an air of confidence, suggest that it has a cohesive plan of action, and persuade America and the world that its top officials are in agreement, it’s not doing the best job. If there are disagreements on how large of a threat ISIS poses to the United States, and about how the country should counter those threats, then those conflicts are doing a fine job of spilling into public view.